Page:The youth of Washington (1910).djvu/79

 because among them, for the first time as concerned lads of near my years, I met my match in wrestling and jumping, and what we called the Indian hug. Almost all of them served under me in the war, and one, William Crawford, rose to be a colonel and perished miserably, being burned at Sandusky in the war with the Indians, after their cruel way.

The Rev. Mr. Marye concerned himself more than the ordinary schoolmaster with the manners of his scholars. I may have been inclined beyond most lads to value his rules of courtesy and decent behaviour, for I kept the book in which I was made to copy the one hundred and eighteen precepts he taught us. I conceive them to have been of service to me and to others. I find the mice have gnawed and eaten a part of these rules. When, of late, I showed them to my sister Betty, she said she hoped eating of them would make the mice polite, for she was dreadfully afraid of those little vermin.

In this manner my next two years passed by. During this time I became still further attracted by the exactness and interest of the surveying of land, which I carried on without present thought of gain. I used to